15 Movies I Can't Stand That Everyone Else Seems To Love

Nashville (Robert Altman)

Yes, Henry Gibson is wonderful in it. It's those other 23 "stars" who couldn't find a bathroom at the Grand Old Opry if Johnny Cash was their usher. Notice how cunningly Altman immunizes himself from coming off as a clueless interloper by turning Geraldine Chaplin into a worse one.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)

I do not like your master plan. I do not like it, Stan-I-Am.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)

Hard to say whether Scorsese or De Niro is showing off more, and they sure did know how to show off in their younger days. But as either sociology or fake-Dostoevski psychology, Taxi Driver's a crock, and John Hinckley didn't disprove that. He proved it.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Goodfellas (ditto)

Just to get Scorsese lovers even more riled at me. And have I mentioned how much I hate The King of Comedy, too?Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg)

So this is "how it really was," eh? Then WTF are the D-Day paratroopers doing behind Omaha (not Utah) Beach?Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Manhattan (Woody Allen)

Loved it the first time. Then I made the mistake of going back. Woody's idea of self-criticism always was another man's idea of a love letter—addressed "To Whom It May Concern," but written on a fogged bathroom mirror.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

The Graduate (Mike Nichols)

I'd probably mind it a lot less if it hadn't been so influential. In the worst way, too. Those prosperous, complacent midcentury suburbs look a mite more attractive now that the roof's fallen in, don't they?Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)

The best actor in it is Harrison Ford.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Ruined the best American play ever written. And the best actor in it is Karl Malden.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (Frank Capra)

Tribute to democracy, my foot. If you doubt you're watching an admiring account of a dictator's early years, imagine it dubbed in German.Photo: Courtesy Kobal Collection

From Here To Eternity (Fred Zinnemann)

Because I love James Jones, that's why. And the 1979 miniseries version—which wasn't even on DVD the last I checked—is much truer to the book, from the unglamorized casting on down.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

Heat (Michael Mann)

Never found a single reason to care what was going on.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

The Silence of the Lambs

Prurient junk is fine with me. Just don't gussy it up and call it a Rolls-Royce.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

American Beauty (Sam Mendes)

I'm kind of cheating, since lots of smart people did hate this on first release. Not nearly enough of them, though.Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection

15 Movies I Can't Stand That Everyone Else Seems To Love

Go ahead and blame Facebook for tempting me. As for why this list ended up so chauvinistically America-centric, that's not because I'm indifferent to international cinema. But even the most overrated foreign "classics" don't annoy me in the intimate way home-grown ones do

Yes, Henry Gibson is wonderful in it. It's those other 23 "stars" who couldn't find a bathroom at the Grand Old Opry if Johnny Cash was their usher. Notice how cunningly Altman immunizes himself from coming off as a clueless interloper by turning Geraldine Chaplin into a worse one.